Egg cosies

Just before Christmas a friend of mine asked if I would knit her an egg cosy. The interesting thing is where the request came from: having visited her friends for the weekend she was scandalised to discover that they did not possess egg cups for dippy eggs, so purchased them some for Christmas. Whilst on the website she saw egg cosies, and thought how cute! then looked at the price and changed her mind.

Having looked into this I can confirm that a nice-looking egg cosy will cost you between four and ten pounds online. The cynical part of me says that this is the price of modern society, as this one cost me two hours and about 10p in wool. I am considering going into business on etsy.com!

Christmas chez Roberts

I love Christmas. But I hate consumerism. Call me a hippy, or a leftie or whatever you want. But it's not because I hate having nice things, I just hate the attitude that would say if we don't have a star on top of the tree, Christmas is RUINED!! I also feel Christmas has become waaay to sophisticated, which I think takes some of the fun out of it. I'm all for paper chains and tacky coloured lights myself.


So this year our decorations took on a unique look, and I thought I'd share...

 Our little tree - cost us £13 from a local garden centre, and we hope it will last us for a goodly few years yet (and get a bit bigger each year!)

 Jon soaking willow in the bath to re-supple it for wreaths.

Greenery from here and there for wreaths and prettifying the flat

 Our 'fire' place (no fire allowed, sadly) all dolled up. Complete with knitted banana in fruit bowl.

Our tree with bells and lights on. Total spend on tree decorations: £1. Ah, so pretty :o)

A very happy Christmas, and a wonderful new year to all!

Darn it!

I have a confession to make...

Last weekend I darned one of my husband's socks.

*gasp*

What's more, it has to be one of the most satisfying tasks I have completed in recent months.

*double gasp*

But why? Sock darning seems so boring... I think it's because of our throw-away culture: all my life my thought has been to fix my socks, but I never do it and end up spending money on a new pair, and throwing away a pair of socks whose only fault is a hole in the toe/heel.

There's something very satisfying in only spending 48p on a roll of darning wool, that to date has fixed 4 of his holey work socks. It's also really simple, and I think it looks pretty good. (Really good tutorial here if you fancy learning)

I also am now learning to knit socks, in an attempt to increase the value of such a vital item (and my skill set). I mean, am I going to chuck away socks that I've spent several weeks (months, years) knitting? You must be blimming kidding!

Besides, home made socks are purty!

Seeds

It's about this time of year that I dig out the box of seeds and the stack of gardening books and begin dreaming about next year and all the things I could do...

This year I'm trying to be a bit more savvy though. Inspired by a lecture I crashed on organic horticulture I've made us a planting plan in Excel (I'm a believer that there are few things that cannot be improved by the employment of a spreadsheet!). This has our plants down the side, and weeks of the year along the top. Seeds are group by rotation groups (legumes, tatties, cabbagey type things etc.) and coloured blocks signify planting dates.

Boring much? Maybe. But the idea is that we'll get a continuous harvest of veggies this year rather than several gluts interspersed by trips to the shop to top up on things.

We will be topping up on a few seeds after Christmas from our catalogue of choice: The Real Seed Catalogue which do an amazing array of veg, flowers and unusual bits and pieces. The best bit is they don't do F1 hybrids, so all the seed can be saved for the next year.

I'm currently badgering Jon for some walking onions. I'll let you know if I succeed...

Garlic

Jon and I eat a lot of garlic. And I mean a LOT.

Last year we spent about £10 on garlic bulbs from the garden centre, and grew them on the allotment. Unfortunately, getting married in June we neglected the veg patch at the most important point and the poor things were swamped by weeds. This is bad as garlic (like onions) has very shallow roots and competes very poorly with weeds. The spring planted garlic barely did anything, the winter planted stuff did ok - presumably as it had a head start while the weeds were down.

We grew enough to supply us up to now, and have decided the rest should go for growing next year. Queue me spending a happy half hour in the gathering gloom last Saturday putting cloves into modules just to make sure it can get going for spring - we'll decide where it's going later i.e. when it's not so cold and wet at the allotment. I first heard of doing this on Carol Klein's TV programme, and think it's a spiffing idea. This way they get a head start on the weeds when we plant them out.

So, together with my birthday Elephant garlic (bought from The Garlic Farm on the Isle of Wight at the Royal Berks Fair) (rock on, I'm that cool) I currently have 104 cloves growing, plus the 2 rows on the allotment, which might just keep us stocked for the year, with enough to plant for the following year. Hurrah!

The salad project!

This coming season (2012) Jon and I will not be getting married (as we did this year), so with all the extra time we're planning on growing as much of our veg as we can. Central to this is the provision of sufficient salad to keep us in tucker during the summer. Over the 2011 summer we bought about 2 bags of salad a week, plus associated cucumbers and other salady bits...

Although about as eco-friendly as we could make it, being bought from Reading True Food Co-op and sourced locally (and organically - and chlorine free), the cost added up. I dread to think how much we spent on lettuce. So this year I'm determined to grow sufficient salad to keep us fed, for less money than we were previously spending.

A slight problem with this is that we are in rented accommodation, and I'm reticent to tamper with our garden. I've carved out a small bed in one corner, but I suspect most of our salad will have to come from containers. I should say that we also have an allotment, but this is being given over to main crops (potatoes, beans, onions etc. more later) but I'm NOT trekking all the way up there for salad each day!

SO! My first step is to try and calculate how many plants we're going to need...I've read up on a number of related websites, and I've seen recommendations from 4 lettuces for a family of 4, to 48 per person.

Hmmm.

About me

My name is Bee, and I am a PhD student in agriculture, studying the diversity of a nifty bacteria called rhizobia which, through a relationship with legumes fixes nitrogen in the soil (you may remember it from GCSE science). This means I meet a lot of interesting people, and learn a lot of interesting stuff. It also means my work is never done!

I love nature, people, growing my own food (and doing a bit of foraging, too), being creative (mainly knitting, crochet and making a mess with paints) learning, and reading stories. On any given day, the chances are that I would rather be at the allotment with my husband, or pottering in the garden with the cat - unless I'm already there, in which case I'm as happy as anyone could be.

When I'm done I want to work alongside farmers and community groups, helping people to grow food and translating academic-ese into language people (including myself!) can understand. I could also be tempted into any number of jobs that feature the words 'organic', 'Fairtrade', 'policy' or 'development'...

I've started this blog to share some of my experiences, pictures and links. I hope you enjoy it!